Persistence
by Carrie L
Summary: In Persistence of Vision (season 2), Chakotay is unaffected by the alien's hallucinations until he's alone in the turbo lift. What do you suppose he saw? Canon-friendly.


The last words she said to me on the bridge were, "Commander, give Torres a hand." I knew it was her because of how casual she was with me. That's what saved me. Around me, the rest of the bridge crew – even normally impervious Tuvok – succumbed almost instantly to the Bothan's mind control. What I saw when the screen lit up with an image stolen from my mind was Kathryn as I wanted to see her: out of uniform, hair down, looking at me with an expression that for once was not distracted by crew reports, hostile aliens, or the latest maintenance challenge. She was telling me that she'd been abducted, that the woman at my side was only a hologram, that she needed me. I could have stared at that face for the rest of my life. I would have, but … "Commander, give Torres a hand," she said.

And that was Kathryn. I turned away from the screen without a synapse worth of hesitation to obey her command. The Kathryn who could dismiss me with only the briefest eye contact, holding my gaze just long enough to be sure that I was still under her control, that was the real one. I crossed to the turbo lift and stepped in as she gave orders to Neelix. He followed me into the lift, and then, just before the doors shut, another passenger joined us.

It was Not-Kathryn. I had just confirmed for myself that Kathryn still wore her uniform, and this creature in a blue dress I would rather not remember was some form of telepathic hypnosis, my thoughts used against me. I turned away from it and interrogated Neelix with every question I could think of.

"Where are you going? How are you going to fight this? What did you see on the viewscreen?" My questions were coming too fast for him to answer, but I needed to keep talking so that I couldn't be distracted by Not-Kathryn's gravelly voice at my shoulder.

When Neelix stepped off at Deck 3, I nearly panicked. "Come with me to engineering!" I cried. "You can do as much good there as anywhere! We should stick together!" But the doors had already closed as Neelix turned to answer me, faster than they normally closed, as if the lift itself was part of the trap. Alone with her, I felt defenseless as a newborn. This was what the alien wanted, me alone, unable to walk away.

Not-Kathryn stepped close to my side. She put a hand on my shoulder. I shook it off, shut my eyes, and began to recite the Great Charter of Dorvan, which I'd learned by heart as a boy to win a school prize. The bold, noble words resonated in the small chamber, drowning out whatever Not-Kathryn was trying to say. In a moment, miraculously, the doors opened and I stumbled in my haste to get out of the lift and into Engineering.

In front of me, B'Elanna sat sagging against a console, staring like the others. There was nobody left conscious. I had taken the first step toward the console to complete B'Elanna's task when I heard its voice speak clearly for the first time. Not-Kathryn's voice. "Chakotay," she said, in that overly-enunciated way she has of saying my name. I love that sound. The alien knew I love that sound.

"No!" I cried. "It's not her!" I tried to take another step, but my feet had grown too heavy.

"Why wouldn't you come for me, Chakotay?" she asked. "I was waiting for you, like I've been waiting all this time."

You see, it didn't matter. I knew what she was. I understood the nature of the trap. I was aware when I turned to look at her that this was Not-Kathryn, not my Kathryn, or the Kathryn I wish were mine. That's the elegance of the Bothan's trap. He offers the one thing we can't refuse, even when we see the danger. Like the mythical thorn bird, we know that death is at hand, but the Bothan's game renders death so beautiful as to be irresistible. That's what happened to me.

I turned, and there was Not-Kathryn, stretching out her hand to me, beckoning me back into the turbo lift. Her dress, unlike the dress I have seen Kathryn wear, was low-cut and stretched tight across her breasts. She was too obvious a dream, this Not-Kathryn. The alien was pulling out all the stops. When her fingers touched mine they were warm and soft and I could smell the vague soapy scent of her that has sustained me through countless duty shifts spent less than a meter from her.

It was Not-Kathryn but magnificently Kathryn. Her eyes, that color I could never forget if I was blinded. The shallow scar just below her jawline, the way her hair falls in perfect curls when she's had it pinned up and something shakes it loose. Oh yes, I've seen that, and called on every particle of Starfleet discipline in this tired old body to keep from reaching out to touch it. Oh my Kathryn. Here she was.

"I've waited for you all this time," Kathryn said as she pulled me back into the turbo lift. "I thought you didn't care."

"I thought you were still hoping to get home to Mark," I answered. It's what she'd said just a few weeks earlier, some light remark about getting home before her fiancé forgot about her. I took it as a subtle direction to stand down, bide my time until she'd made peace with the loss.

"Mark." She scoffed. "Why would I go back to him, even if we were on Earth right this minute, if I could have _you_?" It was seamless the way she pulled my head down to hers. Looking back, that must have been the moment when I stopped moving and fell completely under the Bothan's spell. I don't remember it that way. In my mind, we fell together. There was nothing between that instant and falling onto the bed in her quarters, because of course the Bothan was compiling the scene from my fantasies and in my fantasies we didn't take a turbo lift ride and a long walk up the corridor before consummating our hidden passions. I was somewhere lost in that night with her when the dream ended and I found myself staring dry-mouthed at the turbo lift wall.

"Pretty embarrassing, all in all," I concluded when I'd recounted an abbreviated version of this tale to B'Elanna in the empty mess hall late one night, not long after we escaped the Bothan. "So you see, whatever you saw can't be as humiliating as what I saw. I feel better already getting it off my chest. Your turn."

B'Elanna gave me a look somewhere between an awkward smile and severe indigestion. She shook her head. "No – you know, I have an early watch in the morning. I'd better turn in." She left the mess hall so fast it could have been on fire, which should teach me to use friends as counselors. I have to get it through my head that I'm alone on this ship, and I will be for as long as we're out here. Now, though, I'm alone with the memory of my night with Not-Kathryn, which is more than I had before.


End file.
